“Isaac! Isaac! Isaac! Can you hear me? Isaac!”
The distorted voice, a male voice, echoed louder, like random noises passing through Isaac’s head from the bottom of a barrel, twirling around his brain until it stung him in the back of the head, ripple after ripple of pain-generating resonance, hitting like a brick wave, crumbling in the minefield of his thoughts.
Slowly, the waves started to lose intensity, and the sound of his name faded into clarity. Isaac opened his eyes and immediately felt his retinas burning from the artificial light.
His head was heavy; he could barely keep it straight. He shut his eyes for a few moments then opened them again and blinked rapidly, searching his surroundings as the man kept calling his name. He wanted to answer, but something was stopping him. His mind was scattered, could not focus on anything for more than a second.
There was a man, that he knew, but he could only make out the white coat he was wearing and a few facial features; he was dark-haired with small eyes. Everything else was just a blur.
Images of the Marker flashed before his eyes and startled him. Unlike his surroundings, the images were clear to him, even if he only saw them for a fraction of a second; he could see every symbol written on the alien artefact, like a lightning strike, burning them on the back of his eyes with each passing flash. He shook his head a few times and blinked rapidly, took a deep breath, and noticed that his vision was improving.
“Isaac, Isaac, nod your head if you can hear me”, the voice went on again.
Isaac nodded a few times, looking left and right, investigating his surroundings. He tried to lean forward, but he could not do so. He looked down and saw a thick metallic strap tied to the chair around his waist. He looked up at the man in front of him with indignation without saying a word. He was still seeing him behind a thick haze and could not make out any facial expressions. He shut his eyes for a few moments, then lifted his hands from underneath the table, opened his palms, and stared at them as if he was reading a book, fully emerged in them.
After a few moments, he realised that his vision was not only back to normal, but also significantly improved. He could not remember the last time he saw everything in so much detail. He continued to scan the surface of his palms, and looked at all the lines, wrinkles, and corns that hardened his skin, especially the index finger, the trigger finger. His hands started to shake as he stared at them. He tried to follow them with his eyes, but the quick motion was sending him back into his past for a fraction of a second at a time.
He was rocking back and forward between his memories and the vision of his shaking hands. His heart started pounding in his chest and his breathing accelerated as each flashback from his past became more violent, showing him images of mangled dead bodies, growling, and scythe- wielding necromorphs charging towards him, gunshots, and explosions pounding in his head. His ears were ringing with a growing sharp noise, and he began to hyperventilate as a sense of fear and helplessness grew inside of him. He saw himself running and shooting frantically through the dark, lighting up necromorphs with the flashes from his rifle muzzle, when, suddenly, a bright red light engulfed his field of vision, a loud shriek and a scythe whooshed through his neck, which snapped him back to reality, looking down at his hands, which were now both steady as rocks.
Gradually, he started to feel his senses coming back to him, overwhelming his brain with information about his surroundings. He felt a slight draft blowing gently against his skin, coming from an old rusty vent grill in a far corner of the room.
The air was warm and stale: a clear sign that the scrubs haven’t been serviced on time. Then he got startled by a water droplet hitting the metal floor behind the man in the white coat. He waited for another one to fall, and then started counting the seconds in his head. He counted to seven before another one splashed down, then another, and another, and then his breathing stopped halfway through inhaling as a thick, putrid smell chocked his airways. He exhaled and forced himself to inhale again without chocking, taking in the heavy stench as if he was breathing through an old thick blanket taken of a decaying corpse.
The repugnant smell sent him straight back to the Ishimura, shortly after crashing into it with the O’Bannon. The same stale atmosphere, damp rusty bulkheads, jungle-like humidity, and the smell … that unforgettable stench that would penetrate his breathing apparatus and test the strength of his oesophagus, constantly triggering his gag reflex.
Even now, he felt his stomach rumbling as images of eviscerated bodies and rotten corpses played in his head, but he quickly shook them off and tried to put them away in the back of his mind.
He stopped looking at his palms and focused on the gap between them. He then realised that the man in front of him has stopped calling his name. The only sound in the room was coming from the water droplets hitting the metal floor, distracting him from the stench.
He remembered the plumbing classes he took as part of his engineering module. He hated that class.
“Never underestimate the importance of water in a spaceship!” he heard his teacher saying, an old fat man who never smiled. Isaac dared to chuckle at his quivering waddle, making fun of him behind his back.
“Mr Isaac, are you finding this amusing?” said the teacher, looking at Isaac over his glasses.
Isaac remembered smiling in front of the teacher, and then regret and nostalgia overwhelmed him.
Damn, I miss being happy, he said to himself.
Then he went back to his memory and his obnoxious teacher.
“No sir”, he said.
“Would you care to tell me what you would do if you were to run out of water on a disabled
Class B Interstellar, Mr Clarke?”
“I would take hydrogen from the cooling servers, combine it with the O2 in the life- support tanks, and make … water” he replied.
Isaac focused on the gap between his hands and remembered how confident he was in his reply to his teacher. Another drop of water fell on the metal floor behind the man in the white coat, who now was just staring at Isaac.
His teacher sprung back into his head
“You will have five thousand crew members lined up to get water from a hose, Mr. Isaac. That is not fixing, Mr. Isaac That is NOT engineering, Mr Isaac!” said the teacher,
leaning over Isaac’s desk.
Another drop of water fell on the cold, rusty floor, smashing his memories. Isaac lifted his eyes and looked up to where the water was dripping from: an exposed water pipe connection leading into the ceiling. He was right. The ship was old, older than the Ishimura by at least a hundred years. The paint on the bulkheads was all but chipped away, and the remaining walls were full of cracks, making the logo of the ship virtually indistinguishable.
Must be one of the UCL-type cargos, the jeeps of starships – simple, rugged, easy to adapt and cheap to maintain, with plenty of space in the cargo bay, and an engine big enough for three shock-point drives.
The room was empty, and no bigger than a jail cell.
Isaac looked at the man in front of him. He noticed that underneath the white coat, he was wearing a full-dress military uniform, the kind of uniform that was worn on ceremonies.
The open white coat made it possible for him to see the gold braid, lanyards, and lampasas on his chest. However, amongst all his medals, one grabbed Isaac’s attention.
A small black medal that looked like two intertwined stone towers weaved together, growing narrower at the top. The shape of the very first Marker statue discovered underneath an impact crater in the Gulf of Mexico, an alien artefact dated by every single person with the necessary knowledge, at thirteen billion and three hundred million years old.
An artificially created object, as old as the universe itself.
As soon as the final confirmation came out, religions surrounding the Marker started to appear in every colony of the universe, with preachers and evangelists shouting made up stories about its origins. For a while, there were fifty different religions, all sparked by the birth of the Marker, some said it was a divine creation, others feared the apocalypse, and others, were not so fortunate.
The first to notice the Marker’s effects on humans was Michael Altman, a military scientist married to the chief archaeologist who firsts saw the artefact. Together they tried to decipher the symbols imbedded in its surface, symbols that were glowing in bright red hue with each passing day.
They reached to the conclusion that the symbols translated to a gate, a passage, a next step in evolution.
When Altman saw his wife ripping her own flesh off with her bare hands before turning into a vicious creature with sharp bone scythes for arms, not only did he not change his mind, but in his madness, he thought that this was the next step towards Convergence, a step back from the old homo sapiens to an undead creature connected to a hive mentality, driven by the soul desire to kill, and
turn any life form into one of them.
A Necromorph.
Altman then gathered all the churches based around the Marker, and created one unified organization, called, the church of Unitology.
Seeing how every person that came in contact with the Marker became utterly mad beyond recovery, Earthgov stepped in and ordered the Marker to be flown off planet, buried in an uncharted sector, where it would remain hidden until the mining crew of Ishimura would come across it, and became necromorphs as soon as the artefact was brought on board.
The ship went silent, and Isaac was sent to repair it as an engineer. That was his first encounter with the Marker and its effects.
Now they have made the symbol of the Marker into an honour for those who fight for the
Unitology.
But against who? He asked himself.
The man was barely in his thirties by the looks of it, although others could not collect that many medals in a lifetime of service, saw Isaac staring at the medals on his chest and closed the buttons on his white coat.
“Water! I need some water!” Isaac demanded, looking left and right, confusion giving way to anger as his senses returned. Whatever medication they gave him seemed to be wearing off.
Isaac could see the man in front of him clearly now: buzz haircut, a sharp, pointy nose, thin lips and eyes as dark as two polished lumps of coal. Isaac looked at his stature. He was thin but not athletic. He could easily take him out if it were not for that strap around his waist.
The man in front of him kept staring at him without making a gesture. Isaac tried to avoid looking at his pitch-black eyes, which made him restless. Eventually, the man in the white coat looked to his left, and a nurse entered the room, who placed a glass of water on the table.
Isaac took a small sip and placed the glass back on the table without making a sound.
“Where am I? Who are you? Whe-Where am I? And what is this?” said Isaac in a weak voice, looking around and grabbing the metallic strap around him.
The man cleared his throat and laced his fingers on the table.
“My name was Carl Peterson,” he said in a calm and gentle tone. “I am the communications officer of the USS Star Chaser, on board of which we are. We found you halfway frozen on what remained of a planet far from here; you were in suspended animation for a long time before we found you. We took you on board and provided you with the best medical care available. We saved your life” concluded the man, nodding his head towards him.
“Why? How did you find me?” asked Isaac.
“Easy! You blew up a planet,” said the man with a subtle smile on his face.
Images flashed in front of Isaac’s eyes – running, the remains of a planet, the ground shaking violently beneath his feet and lava erupting everywhere … He could almost feel the sulphurous atmosphere choking him as the crumbling moon of Tau Volantis was giving its last breath. He had to get to the ship and he was not alone. He blinked intensely, looked at his hands and then his mind exploded with a new fear and his body strained against his restraints.
“Carter! Ellie!” he shouted, his eyes wild. “They’re dead”, Carl answered swiftly. “What? How?”
Carl changed his tone to a more serious one. “Listen, Isaac, I know this is a bit hard on you, but, you see, we brought you here with a purpose, and if that purpose is not fulfilled, then you are of no interest to us, and if you are of no interest to us, then you are at our disposal, so to speak”.
“Let me guess, you want to probe my brain”.
“We already did that. Many times, actually.”
Isaac’s eyes started to water. He looked at his own reflection on the metal table in front of him.
“All those people dead … they’re all dead”, then looked up at Carl and shouted, “because of you fucking nuttcracks!”
Carl listened motionless, untouched by the display, then calmly said, “Have a look behind you, Isaac”.
“Fuck you!”
Isaac leaned in as close as the strap around his waist would allow, looking Carl menacingly in the eyes.
“Whatever you want me to do, I won’t do it!
Carl leaned back in his chair, as if in serious contemplation for a few moments, then he grew a large smile on his face and said joyfully, “Of course you won’t, you’re strapped to a chair”.
He lifted his index finger slightly and looked at the door with the corner of his eyes.
The same nurse re-entered the room, walked over to Isaac on Carl’s signal, and removed the strap that was holding him to the chair. She then walked out in perfect silence, holding the strap to her chest.
Both men remained seated at the table, looking straight into each other’s eyes. The only sounds in the room were faint thumps from outside the ship and the drip, drip, drip of water as they stared: Carl, motionless and unblinking; Isaac filling with rage. The longer he stared, the angrier he became, until he could contain it no longer and flew over the table smashing his fist into his gobsmacked adversary has face, throwing him to the floor with a sickening crack.
Carl rolled on his side with blood gushing from his nose, holding his hands tight around it to stop the bleeding.
“Great Altman and his kingdom! What the fuck was that for?” he shouted, breathing through his mouth.
“For whatever is out that window behind me,” Isaac told him, retaking his seat. “I have a feeling you deserve it.”
He waited for the security guards to barge in and taze him, but Carl was still in agony on the floor, sitting against the wall, stuffing cotton wool up his nose, and no one came through the door. If he wanted, he could have killed Carl twice by now.
After he realised that no one was coming for him, he slowly pushed his chair back, got up, and walked towards the window behind him. Carl stumbled up to his feet and sat back in his chair, adjusting his blood-splattered white coat on his shoulders. The same nurse opened the door, gently walked towards him, and placed a small metal mask over his face.
Isaac did not even hear her coming in. It was only when she pressed a few buttons on the mask and it started to engage the nanobots, that Isaac looked over his shoulder and saw her. Just moments later, the nurse removed the mask from Carl’s face, which was now fully healed, and left the room.
Before he got to see through the window, Isaac stared at his reflection closing in, getting bigger in the glass. He has not aged at all since he last saw himself, and he thought he was old back then. His face was wrinkled, his beard, with silver grey hairs in it, shone in the glass reflection, and the shadows covering his facial features, where the most accurate reflection of his inner self.
It was only when he was closer to the window that he could begin to focus on what was behind it – hundreds of battleships fighting each other in the orbit of a bright yellowish planet glowing slightly in the light of its star. Small ships were engaged in dogfights, roaming around the battleships like bees around a hive, spitting thousands of rounds at each other, while massive motherships were firing blaster canons against each other’s shields.
Each explosion was sending shockwaves in all directions, some even reaching the Star Chaser.
Isaac looked back at Carl and realised how he got all those medals on his chest, then
looked back out the window.
A strange voice started talking into his head, repeating the same words: We were coming! We were hungry! We were here! And more flashbacks – Him and Carter on board the CMS Terra- Nova, shock-pointing back to Earth. He remembered the cluster of emotions passing through his stomach at the sight of the necromorph infested planet. But then again, maybe it was all a dream he had while he was in crio. After all, he was found drifting in the Volantis system, or so Carl said – a church member, and a decorated one nonetheless.
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He looked at the planet more carefully. He could not see any nearby planets, only a moon, broken in large pieces, and a star.
Damn if that doesn’t look like the sun, he said to himself. “What is this?” he asked Carl. Carl answered with a slight hesitation in his voice. “That is a planet infected by the necromorphs”, he said. “That … is Earth”.
Isaac’s eyes widened as he looked fixedly at the state of the planet and the havoc surrounding it. He started to recognise the moon around it, the distance from its star and distant alignments.
In the background, the once-blue planet that was teeming with life, looked more like Venus. A thick, dark, yellow plume was hiding everything underneath as it covered all the landscapes, the oceans and the atmosphere. However, something else caught Isaac’s eye: a thin ring around its equator. He tried to get a better look, but the window was flecked with scratches and dust particles.
Then he saw a fighter jet flying away from cannon fire. It took a few evasive manoeuvres swirling and tumbling through the massive gun turrets of the ship, before it was quickly blown away by one of the sentinels.
The pieces scattered through space, some drifting away, others flowing towards the equator of the planet, becoming part of its ring. That image sent cold shivers down Isaac’s shoulder blades; he could only imagine the scale of destruction that led to this. He felt like he has been thrown to the bottom of the sea with a concrete block tied to his legs, brought back to the surface just as he was about to drown, given a breath of oxygen, and thrown back into the sea for another round of struggle.
Over, and over, and over, again, without a say in it.
He realised that he was now a free prisoner of war in a jail cell made of treason and dire consequences ,that kept him as the centrepiece in the game between the EarthGov and the Unitology.
And the ring, humanity’s last gift to its home planet. If it’s going to destroy itself, might as well do it in style.
An explosion caught his eye on one of the battleships, and he saw a jet fighter shooting its comms towers. It tried to fly away as the ship’s defences turned on it and the jet was blown to pieces even before he had a chance to launch the countermeasures.
Isaac then took a closer look at the ship. Class M battle cruiser. A ten-mile-long, sleek ship, with the front half-split into two separate pieces, housing the hangar bay and weapons storage.
It was designed for full-speed interception and assault, with the best success rate in the fleet. Its main advantage, a plasma phaser generator. With it, it would never run without ammo. Even without the crew, it could be programmed to recognise specific targets and engage in strategic combat with zero human input. Its shield generators were heavily guarded in the middle of the ship, and were connected to a failsafe device that would activate every single weapon on board as soon as it sensed any damage, and would start shooting in all possible directions until the core would go into meltdown, detonating with the force of a small supernova. They called the device “The Happy Ending”. The ship – The Loas.
On the other side, the opposing battleship had a sleeker design. Isaac remembered seeing that ship only once in his lifetime. The flagship of the EarthGov army. T-class destroyer. Its name shined largely on its side, illuminated by bright red laser beams. The Ripper.
Its compact delta shape revealed few features on its exterior. It was larger than the Loas, and one would argue that it made for an easier target. However, the Ripper has not one but five shield generators with a state-of-the-art quantum frequency ripper that made it impossible for anything to jam or scramble it. On its maiden voyage, the crew of the ripper was ordered to fly the ship through a small star in the Terros system to test the integrity of the shields. The Ripper flew into the star and burst through the back of it intact, with only a few pockets of hot gas exploding on its surface.
With just a few burn marks and computer glitches, the Ripper returned to its base, triumphant and indestructible, sending every weapons manufacturer into a panicked frenzy of research and development.
Isaac then realised why it was so hard for one army to win over the other: one was indestructible through conventional methods, while the other took them both out if it was destroyed.
“How the fuck did this happen?” he demanded, turning back to Carl.
Carl signalled for Isaac to sit, and as Isaac slowly returned to the table and sat in front of him, he began his story.
“A couple of years ago, a few of our brother-scientists stumbled onto a technology that could replicate any molecule and atom in existence, literally anything. They could make gold, oil, gas, diamonds, you name it. But the high council decided that the first thing we should attempt to replicate ,was a Marker. And after a series of tests, they decided to proceed with the creation program.
“In their infinite wisdom, and in the quest to attract more funds, EarthGov and the Unitology church decided to make the Marker creation a public event, and landed the research facility in the middle of the most crowded colony on Earth, so everyone could witness every atom created”.
“Hold on a second!” Isaac interrupted. “I thought the Unitology already had a Marker on
Earth. We stopped Danik from sending the signal that activated them”.
“And that is why we had to build a black Marker. Because the replicas were useless–thanks to you.”
“You’re welcome”, answered Isaac, swiftly.
“You don’t understand. The Markers work in pairs.” “What?”
“The red Markers we had on Earth, they each had a pair. For the convergence to work, it takes two Markers, otherwise you end up with … that”, said Carl, pointing out the window. He then leaned towards Isaac and added, “Only a Marker can destroy another Marker and its legacy. You blow up a Marker, and any tiny piece of it that meets a lifeform, will destroy that lifeform. But use
the effects of another Marker on it and – pouf! – You erase the information from it. All you have left is a nice twisted piece of rock”, finished Carl, smiling and leaning back in his chair.
“So, why didn’t you build two Markers?” asked Isaac.
“What is the opposite of a circle? Is it a square ? A diamond?” Carl asked, pointing his finger at Isaac. “You are the only one who can understand the symbols, and if you can understand them, you can also see the opposite of their meaning.”
“So, let me guess this straight, you had the ability to build anything known to man, out of anything, and the first thing you decided to build was a Marker ? One that you couldn’t even control? And when did you realised that you couldn’t reverse the symbols on it?”
“The day we finished it,” said Carl, full of regret.
“No, honestly now, is everyone in that Church crazy?”
Carl looked at him and raised his eyebrows. “Is anyone left alive on Earth?” asked Isaac. Carl shook his head. “No.”
Isaac scuffed and shook his head. “I do this then I’m dead; the Unitology will take over again, and you’ll start this shit, same as before”
“Look behind you. By the time you finish, the Marker, the Unitology and EarthGov will probably kill each other off. Besides, it’s not that tragic; there are plenty of humans out there in space. It’s just … erm, you know, nostalgia.”
Isaac started laughing. “Nostalgia?” He then suddenly switched to an aggressive and serious tone. “Are you out of your fucking mind? In fact, you know what? Fuck this! I’m not doing it!”
“Excuse me?”
“There are plenty of planets out there I could made a living on. My brain is already fucked up! No! Fuck you, and fuck your planet!”
“Do you not see what’s going on out there? Do you even realise what’s at stake here?” “Yeah, your ass!” said Isaac.
Carl pushed his chair back, got up, and leaned against the table. “You think a giant necromorph the size of a planet will just keep to itself? Once the infection reaches these kinds of
proportions, it doesn’t need a Marker to infect other lifeforms. It can just send signals through space, and whoever receives it – snap!” concluded Carl, snapping his fingers. “They are necromorphs. If we don’t stop this right now, no one in the universe will be safe. Ever. It will be just a matter of time before the infection takes over. It may not happen overnight, but do you really want a future where that thing controls everything?”
Isaac rested his head in his hand, rubbing his forehead. “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to.”
“Don’t you get it? This is your fate. That trip to the Ishimura sealed your future in the fight against the Marker. You are the only one alive that knows its secrets, Isaac. YOU were a living, breathing, Marker-deleting war machine.
“How about you pull your nose out of my ass for a second and tell me what happened on Earth?”
Carl sighed looking at Isaac. He sat back in his chair and began retelling his story.
“When we were close to finishing the first Marker, we were all concentrating on building its negative. We didn’t even see the effects until it was too late. People gathered by the thousands around it on the first day alone. By nightfall, the numbers doubled and more were on the way. That Marker, that incomplete cluster of atoms and symbols, united every single person that came into contact with it. For the first time in history, humans set aside all their differences and united themselves under the scriptures of the Unitology. It was wonderful! Racial wars and discrimination were a thing of the past, the Second Sunrise was the next big thing, and it brought peace in the world, something that no other religion ever managed to achieve in all human history. We were living in a peaceful world joined together by the Marker. And whatever your feelings are in regards
to it, you should know that for a brief period of time, Earth, and humankind, lived in what could only be described as an utopia, all because of the Marker. But, like all good things, this had to come to an end.
And what an end it was … Last month, after countless incidents and missing persons during the recreation process, the last piece of the Marker was finished, and the AMP showed hundred- percent success across the grid. We had successfully duplicated the original black Marker.
The genesis had begun. It was a monumental display, and people flocked from all over the world to see and touch it.
“Shortly after the final piece was completed, the Marker started to glow slowly with a thin red haze around it. It was unlike anything I have ever seen. The more people came, the more the Marker started to glow; the more it started to glow, the more people came to it. But, unfortunately, the celebration didn’t last long, as the Marker began affecting the people gathered around it.
First, there were the ones closest to it who began having hallucinations and violent outbursts, then shortly after that, they started hacking themselves up, calving the exact symbols from the Marker into their own flesh … and not all of them had knives. Some were using nothing but their fingers to gouge out chunks of skin without making a single sound, their eyes fixed on the Marker without even blinking, throwing their own flesh on the floor.
“The authorities intervened, but it only made matters worse. The crowds became violent; not only towards themselves, but also towards anyone they could see. In a matter of hours, the joyful crowd turned into a violent, flesh-ripping frenzy, slashing, gouging, and killing themselves and each other in ways you cannot imagine.”
“Yes, I can”, Isaac interrupted.
“No, you cannot! What you witnessed on the Ishimura was the aftermath. You were asleep in your cosy little bed when your then girlfriend was being turned into one of those things. No, Isaac, you could not possibly imagine what happened that day, the day the world became infected, transformed, dead, and alive. Whatever those people suffered from was contagious, and it
spread fast, faster than anything I have ever seen. Twenty-four hours later, murder was at an all-time record. Even people that were apparently healthy and sane would burst into a mad panic and slaughter everyone around them with no warning.
“Initial reports stated that all of them were afraid to lose their bodies. Every person we captured would scream, begging us not to let ‘them’ take their bodies. We had no idea what they were talking about.
“The news stopped reporting the deaths, replacing the words with a counter in the corner of the screen. Last count … three billion nine hundred and fifty million deaths, and the clock was still going.
“Nobody knew the cause of it. They made countless tests on food, water, air –nothing. At first, they thought it was some kind of airborne pathogen. No one even considered that the Marker could be at fault, even though the evidence was right there in front of them, standing a hundred feet tall in the middle of the colony.
“Eventually, the authorities were overwhelmed and the army was placed on the streets. Global martial law was imposed for the first time. Anyone seen without a gas mask was shot on sight. No one was taking any chances. But those who escaped the Marker’s effects, lived only to be killed by bullets later on.
“There were a few days of silence, when everyone thought that by some miracle they had been spared, only to face hell in its purest form. When transformation came, it didn’t just affect people, it affected every single lifeform on the planet. And trust me when I say this, Isaac, there is A LOT of life on that planet, or at least there was …”
Isaac stared right into Carl’s eyes again with a gaze full of fury, clenching his fists. Carl hesitated for a moment looking at Isaac’s fists. “I was right,” said Isaac. “About what?”
“To punch you”.
“I’m sorry Isaac, we didn’t know,” said Carl, full of regret.
“What the hell are you talking about? The Ishimura, the Sprawl, Volantis? Haven’t you learned anything?”
“There were no records of any kind; we were walking into the unknown. Everything that happened before was strictly classified. The crew that built the Marker on Earth had no information about its effects whatsoever. Everyone was working in the dark,” said Carl, gradually raising his voice until he shouted the last sentence.
“My God! This will never end!” said Isaac, looking down at the table.
“It has ended, Isaac, but not in our favour.”
“Nine billion people killed is not a fluke Carl, it’s a fucking genocide”.
“And out of nine billion people on Earth, no one could escape the Marker’s effects. I’d say that makes you pretty special. Or mentally unstable, according to your medical records.”
Carl leaned over the table towards Isaac again. “Listen, you succeeded in reversing the
Marker’s power once; if we ever have a chance of getting our planet back, you are it.”
“I can’t! As long as the Unitology exists, we are fighting a losing battle. My brain is useless now. I … I can’t remember much”.
Carl fell silent for a few moments, looking at Isaac’s reactions. “Would a black Marker help jog your memory?” he said.
Isaac looked over at Carl as if he stabbed him in the heart. “What are you talking about?” “We have the template of the black Marker on board. We need you to write the symbols on it so we can use it against the other Marker on Earth.”
Isaac looked straight at Carl without saying a word, clenching his jaw repeatedly, and his eyes full of disgust.
Carl pushed the chair back and stood up. “Come with me”, he said. Isaac remained seated, looking up at Carl. He did not say anything.
“Altman be praised, Isaac! I let you punch me in the face, man! Would you stop with the hostility?”
“What happens if I say no?”
Carl took a serious pose and went quiet for a few moments. “Then you stay in here until you say yes … or the world ends, whichever happens first.”
Isaac stood up, leaned on the table for a second, and saw Ellie’s reflection looking back at him.
“You coming Isaac?” Carl shouted holding his hand on the door pad.
Startled, Isaac gravely looked across at him. “Yeah, I am.” When he looked back down at
the table, he saw only himself. He took a deep breath, stood up, and followed Carl out into a narrow corridor in which two people could barely walk side by side. Still, Carl insisted on walking alongside Isaac, keeping a straight posture with his hands behind his back. Isaac took a glance
at him with his peripheral vision then looked down at his black polished shoes stomping the shallow puddles of water on the metal floor.
Military, he thought in disgust, and then looked ahead at the poorly lit corridor crossed with shimmering twinkles reflected by the moisture on the walls, overwhelmed by a familiar feeling. The need to take a crap combined with a pair of butt cheeks clenched together like an alligator jaw, the dry mouth, and the lack of balance.
I am walking into a fucking death trap, and all my buddies in there are as quiet as a-“,
“mouse”, “a forest”, two distinct voices said in his head.
“Well fuck me, nice of you to join the party”, Isaac said.
“Check this guy out, sounding all brave and chill inside his mind while he struggles to keep one leg in front of the other”, said one of the voices.
“He’s right you know”, said the other voice inside his mind” “Argh, screw you both”, grunted Isaac
“Both? Are you implying that there’s just two of us in here?”
Isaac noticed that his heart rate was accelerating and his mouth was getting dry as he tilted his head to pass under another light spot.
“Whoa, slow down there tiger”, said a rugged manly voice, in an old Texan way, “you need to drop ya little ticker a bit lower than that, ‘cause that thing’s about to jump higher than Aunt Rosie on the communion wine outta your chest bubble”.
Somehow he pictured the voice in his head as that of an old drunken cowboy, sitting by a kindling fire, “happy place Isaac, go to your happy place”, he said to himself in a calm soothing voice, trying to imagine an orange sunset over a tropical beach.
“FUCK ME YOU MOTHER FUCKER”, shouted a raging female shriek shrouded in darkness, shouting so hard it sent quakes across the surface of his brain, and loud thumping timpani were drumming around the sharp devilish shrieks, disconnecting Isaac completely from the outside world, “COME ON YOU PIECE OF SH-“
“So, what exactly happened on the Ishimura?” Carl asked as if his voice had cut clean through the havoc and brought him back into the real world, in complete silence. He felt the sharp screams in his head fading away as Carl’s voice sounded louder, and crisper. It had base in it, he did not noticed that before.
“You read the report. You know”, Isaac answered swiftly.
“I read a report Isaac. I don’t know”.
Isaac saw the elevator light flashing just a few yards in front of them.
“I was sent to repair the ship, we crashed into it instead, the ship was crawling with necromorphs, I killed them and destroyed the Marker”. Isaac turned his head towards Carl as they approached the elevator. “Isn’t that what you read in the report?”
Carl and Isaac stopped in front of the elevator and Carl took a straight position, holding his hands behind his back, and looked straight into Isaac’s eyes. “Yes, that’s exactly what I’ve read”, he said in a calm but suspicious manner.
Isaac maintained eye contact with Carl as the elevator arrived, raising his upper lip ever so slightly at him as a sign of disgust.
“What are you afraid of?” asked Carl, keeping the same cold expression on his face. Isaac’s mind went blank, as it did so every time he was in a conflict situation, “You”, he answered swiftly.
“Oh, but it’s not me you have to worry about, Isaac,” answered Carl with an almost jovial tone.
Isaac began to panic and have second thoughts about his decision. The elevator was still on its way, and when it arrived, two things could happen.
One, an interrogator could appear and take Isaac for probing or, two, the elevator was empty and he was going down the rabbit hole with Carl.
As it arrived, everything started moving in slow motion for Isaac. His heart started thumping, almost bursting out of his chest, sending strong pulses to his temples. He could see the elevator doors slowly opening out of the corner of his eye, revealing the white, pale face of a man dressed in interrogator uniform. As the doors slowly moved apart, Isaac almost did not dare look straight at the man, but tried to keep a straight face, hiding his frustration, keeping his eyes fixed on Carl. Then he was gone. Time returned to normal, the doors opened, and they exposed an empty elevator cage, and the white pale face in his peripheral vision, was nothing but a spotlight inside the elevator cabin.
“Is there a problem, Isaac?’ asked Carl, signalling Isaac to go in first.
Isaac looked him dead in the eyes as he passed in front of him and sat in the elevator with his hands behind his back.
Carl followed him, pressed the button then stepped back and took the same posture.
As the elevator went down, neither of them made any sound. Carl looked across at Isaac with the corner of his eye and said, “You should learn to relax, Isaac. No one here will hurt y—”
“Go fuck yourself, Carl!”
“Look, I get all your feelings towards me and the Unitology, but this is beyond us now”.
“Beyond my ass! Until the Unitology is gone, no one on Earth is safe, and the Unitology will never disappear because there are always dumb fucks like you willing to follow its fucking scriptures, and because of your shit, I dodged death God knows how many times, my brain is turned into Swiss fucking cheese, and I have a funny feeling that whatever’s behind those doors will not be too pleasant for me, so spare me the friendly crap!” Isaac burst at him, trying to mask his fear, like a dog that was barking with its tail between its legs.
Carl said nothing.
The elevator stopped with a light jitter, and the doors opened into a huge hangar bay with very little lighting. Carl hesitated for a few moments then exited, stopping after a few steps, but keeping his back turned at Isaac.
“Still not convinced?” he said.
Isaac slowly exited the elevator, looking left and right, scouting his surroundings. The echoes from Carl’s footsteps traveling through the bay gave him an estimate of its size.
Last time he heard similar echoes was at a stadium. The ceiling was pitch black, and the entire room was kept in a twilight darkness, which sent Isaac back and forward across the threshold on his hallucinations again. He started to hear whispers, millions, and millions of whispering voices coming from every direction. He could not understand a word they said, and yet he could not hear anything else either, as if he was in hell, and all the lost souls trapped there were calling for him to save them. He saw himself walking on a narrow path scattered with scalded hands that reached across it from every side. He could not see who the hands belonged to, only the charred, smouldering flesh hanging from their bones, grabbing at Isaac’s feet as he slowly made his way through, trying not to step on any. Then the ground split open beneath his feet, revealing a massive beating heart covered in yellow pustules that seemed to be connected to the ground itself. Isaac felt the heartbeats through his entire body, shaking him violently to its rhythm. The floor crumbled beneath him, and he was falling. A hand grabbed his right arm and stopped him at the edge, but it was like burning coal, slowly searing his flesh. He reached his left arm to grab the hand, but another burst through and grabbed it, this one even hotter than the first one. Isaac felt the urge to scream loudly in pain, but all his shouts remained lodged in his throat.
Another charred hand burst through the side of the wall and placed a piece of shard into his right hand. Isaac looked at it then down at the giant beating heart beneath him. Humanoid shapes bulged through its surface, one by one. He looked back at his dagger and suddenly he was released and found himself falling towards the heart below. Almost instinctively, he raised the dagger, preparing to stab the heart when--
“ISAAC!”
Suddenly, there was silence. The voices stopped at the shout like an order from God Himself. Isaac’s wide eyes managed to find Carl in the distance, under the faint light projector that illuminated the pathway. He drifted pretty far from him. He looked back and saw his hand pressed against the emergency blast door button, which was halfway pressed.
His breath was trembling, and his face was covered in sweat. He slowly retracted his hand, and flakes of rust fell of the blast door button when it sprung back into position. He clenched it in a fist, and bit his lip. He then looked back at Carl, unable to keep the fear from his face, and started walking back towards him without saying a word. Carl looked at him and almost smiled for a moment.
“Told you it’s not me you have to be afraid of. It’s you.”